So, the Snapmaker U1 arrived at my house on Christmas, and I decided to put a “coworker” tag on it after 4 days using. I do not own a big house, but I put 9 3D printers everywhere in it and create and make all kinds of things.
In the past 45 days, I have added the H2C to 21 colors, almost reaches its limit; I have rearranged everything to get the room for the coming Snapmaker U1. Now the sounds of two companies can be heard in my house every day.
I bought the machine right after their launch, the H2C arrives in 3 days, but the U1 had me waiting for 13 days; it is one week shorter than my waiting for H2D. I entered a snapmaker u1 owner group after the order, people are doing comparisons between the two models, sometimes they criticize the Bambu Lab for what they have done on the price and the annoying upgrade for “creating” H2C. Anyway, most of us don’t have the real machines, and it is also hard to get both machines for just testing. But it is different for me, I got H2D, H2C and Snapmaker U1, I bought all of them by myself, so the following opinions is all subjective and details are personal.
Time Saving
The Snapmaker U1 is significantly faster when printing a single object, especially for those small objects with many color changes vertically. Take the Adorable Pikachu Knitted Keychain Toy as an example.
Adorable Pikachu Knitted Keychain Toy by flowercat:
https://makerworld.com.cn/zh/models/758076-ke-ai-pi-qia-qiu-_zhen-zhi-_yao-chi-kou-_wan-ju-cu?appSharePlatform=copy#profileId-723617
It takes the Bambu Lab P1S for 23 hours.
It takes H2D 14 hours. I put two colors on each nozzle to get the fastest result on H2D.
It takes H2C 9.5 hours when having a full functional Vortek.
But it takes only 4 hours on Snapmaker U1, which saves 19 hours, and the H2C saves 13.5 hours.
The gap doesn’t reduce much whether copying the prints nor scale the size. But the game changes when printing wide prints.
This four-color fish takes H2C 9 hours.
And it takes 8 hours on U1, only 1 hour faster.
Anyway, this part is physical and cannot be changed too much by an algorithm or software. The Snapmaker calls the system snapswap; it is way faster than Vortek. As for H2C, the time saving is determined by the filament group, the AMS setup, and the PEFE tube length.
Filament Saving
Assuming that we limit the H2C to 7 colors, the basic option to use full function of Vortek system and the fastest print time it can print; Then we open the flow calibration on the U1. The U1 saves more material, because it has a smaller prime tower.
The U1 reduce the prime tower to a real tower, and the H2C uses columnar as the tower.
Besides, the filament saving is quite close in this assumed condition.
In daily uses things are quite different.
For U1, if you haven’t change filament, when start a new task, do not open the flow calibration, it means calibrate all four nozzles, which waste time and is unnecessary.
For H2C, if there is one color or serval color that are most frequently-switch, set them to the left nozzle, because the hotend switch is faster than Vortek nozzle switch. After that, filament purge and flush starts from the 8 colors, so if you can, please reduce the color to 7.
Structure
Snapmaker U1
Honestly speaking, the open structure of the Snapmaker U1 is a huge issue for me. One of the influencers designed an enclosure upgrade kit for it during his review. It contains a top lid and two filament boxes so that the machine can be more reliable.
I put the U1 on my balcony, and the climate of Shenzhen is clearly wet, which is not very good for filament keeping and 3D printing. It could be worse when using PETG or TPU. The Snapmaker includes 4 500g filaments in every printer. They start to string after 4 days. The open lid could cause temperature loss and lead to fallen prints or wrapping.
So, most people in the group start their second mission after the unboxing, enclosing the printer, and the filament. Someone even put the U1 into the A1 enclosure box.
The enclosed structure is a very basic condition for advanced materials. After that, chamber heating and filament drying are two more necessary features to add.
Next is a huge advantage of the U1 structure. The four heads not only save your time and material but also gives a better solution for soft material printing. You can print soft material in multicolor. It really helps on shoe printing, because we need different features on a shoe to make it durable, wearable and good looking. We can only do that with 2 materials and 1 color in the past. Now the game has been changed.
Let’s say you have done the enclosed thing on your Snapmaker U1, it becomes your good buddy for multi-color printing, multi-material printing, and shoe printing.
H2C
Also starts from the cons. The H2C is heavy and huge. To get the full function, you must use stackers to arrange the AMSs, PEFE tubes, cables, and power supplies, and it takes a lot of room.
And those things are against the shoe printing. You have to take everything on top, remove the complicated AMS system you just settled, and hang the materials you just dried on the top, then you can print a real shoe without any issues caused by friction. It is a huge compromise that goes against the product's key features. The H2C is not a good shoe printer, at least by now.
One more thing, the TPU material can only be printed by the right nozzle, which means under the current setup, you must choose between Vortek TPU, it just downgrade the H2C to a smaller size H2D.
But if shoe printing is not a thing that you're into, the H2C can be your best 3D printer that can handle almost everything.
The printer can handle probably all of the 3D printing materials, you can print all kinds of advanced materials and make combinations as you like, as long as you use TPU for AMS for the solution of the soft material.
Since the Vortek system makes multi-color printing faster and material-saving, you can also add your H2C up to 24 colors.
Besides, if you own a laser version, laser engraving, cutting, and writing give you more possibilities on DIY.
Price
I think we should just skip the Snapmaker U1 because we could buy 3 or 4 of it at the price of the H2C. It doesn’t even take much to add decent enclosure upgrade kit. The 849USD price make it a home use printer.
But things are much different on the Bambu Lab H2C. This printer is a studio printer. Let’s make a list for the H2C.
H2C AMS Combo: $2,399.00 USD
AMS 2 Pro: $299.00 USD
AMS HT: $139.00 USD
AMS: $249.00 USD
H2C Hotend Combo: $139.00 USD
H2C Induction Hotend (Right): $39.99 USD
AMS 2 Pro Switching Adapter: $32.99 USD
SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.2 Flash Drive: $9.99 USD
The H2C AMS Combo Standard + Ultimate Set costs about $2,599.00 USD, which is very expensive.
Software
The Snapmaker U1 uses Snapmaker Orca and the Snapmaker app to control the printer. So far, users can only slice for printing on the Snapmaker Orca on their computers. The Snapmaker Orca is based on Orca, it updates more slowly than the original Orca and has some features customized, for example, you cannot change the timelapse type.
As for the Snapmaker app, it only contains basic functions, such as printing from files, control the printer, check status, manage file, and tutorials. The ticket system is just built; it redirects you to a site, which is quite different than Bambu Handy. The app has no online models at all, either.
But as a cost-effective 3D printer, customers can take that at this stage, Snamaker is making its own progress.
As for H2C, I think we should skip this part, as we all know what Bambu software can do. The Bambu Lab has already create an entire ecosystem. The Bambu Lab 3D printers, the Bambu softwires, the Bambu Lab team, the Bambu Lab Contents, the designers, and the Bambu Lab users are all connected with a Bambu Lab account. It is unfair to compare an ecosystem to a new-born app.
Quality
Honest speaking, the Snapmaker U1 does not have the same quality as the Bambu Lab models. Clearly, it is unfair to compare two models with such huge price differences. But what I can say is that U1 use every cost on what matters.
Before the model launches, I saw some videos from the Kickstarter backers that show the Snapmaker U1 has quality issues, but I still decided to buy it.
The printer arrived at my house on Christmas, when those who received it one day earlier already posting issues or experience. But my U1 comes with perfect quality indeed, it is solid and high performance. I set up it by following the official video tutorial.
As for the Bambu Lab H2C, it is also perfect.
Timelapse Video
Both machines are good at the time-lapse videos. They all have the 1080P resolutions. All we need to do is enable this feature when start a new task. The video can be exported right after the printing.
There are still some differences. The Snapmaker U1 timelapse video is sharper and looks clearer (not really). And the Snapmaker Orca doesn’t support the smooth model yet.
The Bambu Lab H2C, you need a USB drive to use the time-lapse feature.
Experiences
So far, both machine works perfectly, I have printed many multi-color projects with them all the time in the past days. Those non-AMS prints that require assembly becomes an old thing. Thanks to the filament saving feature, I don’t have to refill filaments so frequently as before.
Conclusion
As a guy who has a 40W laser version of H2D, a 21-color-set of H2C, a Snapmaker U1, four P1S Combos, an A1, and an A1 Mini, I totally understand what a 3D printer means. They are coworkers, not competitors, what tools can do is totally decided by the person behind them. I will use H2D for shoe printing, use H2C for multi-color printing, multi-material printing and advanced material printing, and use Snampmaker U1 for multi-color printing, multi-material printing, and advanced shoe printing.
We all hold a same pen, some use it and get the Nobel Prize while most use it for ordinal things. Everything matters, but technologies are all about human, no matter what printers we use, we human beings give it purpose and meaning.
